how old my heart
by cyclothimic
Summary: five kisses that mattered, and one that was clarity.


**just my little twist.**

* * *

_kissing can be so soothing. I wish I had more people around me who were cool to just kiss a while. brush noses and hold faces. I wish it was an okay thing to do and not messy. just soft; a different way of breathing._

* * *

Felicity was fifteen when she had her first kiss. And believe it or not, amongst her rebellious black hair and dark eyeliner, she managed to make the quarterback want to kiss her.

Her school's football team had just won the season's game and somehow, Felicity found herself dragged along to the after party despite the fact that she basically in the _uncool_ clique. Yet there she was, standing in the middle of a room teeming with sweaty and horny and drunken and high teenagers in every corner.

She remembered thinking they were all idiots and why the hell was she stuck in this hellhole and she couldn't believe her mother actually allowed her to be here and she would rather be back home and build another computer and oh those puffs looked delicious.

Halfway through erasing the puffs from the tray and downing glass after glass of wine cooler, there he was, standing in front of her with a smirk and a can of Budlight in his hand.

She didn't know how. She didn't know why. An hour later, she found herself in his backyard and he was kissing her. Like, his lips on her lips and them sharing saliva and all that jazz. She had always found him attractive. Seriously, who wouldn't? He was a well-built quarterback. He's a goddamn _cliché_ and he was a hot cliché.

Nevertheless, when she was kissing him, she expected sparks and fireworks and just some kind of reaction. But nope. Nothing.

The only thing that mattered was that she lost her first kiss to the quarterback. And it mattered because it was her first kiss.

* * *

The second kiss that mattered to her was Cooper.

She was 18 and she was in MIT because she skipped a year of high school. She'd dyed her hair blacker than she had and her eyeliner was heavier and she had no idea what on earth about her that had caught Cooper's eye.

Yet she still had a really cute older guy sitting next to her in the library and asking her out. And she said yes.

On their first date, Cooper took her to a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint. They talked about codes and hackers that managed to escape the cops again and again and they talked about hardware and programs. Felicity found herself really liking this guy.

And when they reached her dorm room at two minutes past twelve, Felicity was kissed by Cooper Seldon. When their lips met, she wasn't looking for _right_. She was looking for something good, unlike her first kiss. And she found it in Cooper.

* * *

Her third kiss that mattered had also broken her heart.

She had had many fantasies about how her first kiss with Oliver would happen. Maybe she would be treating his injuries and their faces would get too close and he would kiss her. Maybe he would be saving her from some super villain and then when they were finally safe, he would kiss her. Maybe they would be in a heated argument and their tension was just so high that he would surge forward and kiss her to shut her up.

So many maybes, so many fantasies – all of them with happy endings. But never had Felicity ever imagined that she would have to walk away after their first proper kiss. Never had she imagined that while she was kissing Oliver, her heart would be shattering at the same time.

She wanted him to not love her. She wanted him to let her go. She wanted to let go because she couldn't handle the countless maybes hanging between them, mocking her of their possibilities and impossibilities. But of course, Oliver had to have one last play with her heart as if breaking up with her even though they weren't even a thing to begin with wasn't enough.

He had to grab her face and lay one on her. It was gentle and rough; calm and turbulent; tranquil and unsettled. This one kiss was a package of paradoxes. It was everything she'd ever wanted. It was also everything she _didn't_ want.

It mattered because it was cruel and giving.

* * *

Barry Allen was a kiss that mattered. Not because she liked him in a more than platonic way – that ship had sailed a long time ago – but because they could have been perfect.

He was a forensic scientist who understood nerd speak and rambled probably just as much as her only with less Freudian slips and same age as hers. Felicity was sure that if they could, they could talk for hours and not run out of topics.

They were two long lost puzzles who would have fit if they tried. And they _did_ fit. They fit perfectly. Crest to peak; height to width; the only thing was, they didn't belong to the same picture. His was of a red hot volcano and hers was of a vast green field.

So it didn't really count no matter how perfectly they fit, because they weren't of the same picture, it wouldn't really matter in the end.

But their kiss, their brief, short kiss, mattered because he had become one of her closest friends and she recognized that fate loved to play with them and she wished so hard that Barry was _it_ for her.

* * *

Maybe the following kiss mattered because it shed light on how much she wasn't relieved of the pain and the joy that was Oliver Queen.

But it still mattered.

One: Ray Palmer was a really attractive person who also may have been the perfect match for her.

Two: Ray Palmer understood her when she spoke computer jargon and told him about nanobots and terabytes.

Three: She had a type.

And maybe she just wanted someone to be there waiting for her, even though it wasn't the person she wanted. She knew it was cruel to Ray but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt…right? And he was there, and he didn't know anything about her other life until he started building a super suit and she realized that she _really_ had a type.

So Ray mattered because he might not be the best, but she was letting herself settle for second best.

* * *

The fifth kiss that mattered had mattered more than all the other kisses that mattered. And now it was in a full sentence she just realized how confusing that sentence was but she had no other way of putting it.

Her mother, despite her outbursts and sometimes childish behavior, had the wisdom in her to not hide the truth from her. And that truth had offered her so much clarity in regards to where – or whom – her heart was directed towards.

Nanda Parbat was the last place on Earth for _anyone_ with a sane mind to declare their love to someone. But she realized that she was far from sane. (She was a hacker who had broken more than a hundred federal laws over the past three years, worked for a vigilante, and fell hopelessly in love with said vigilante. Safe to say she was far from sane.)

And she just needed one night with Oliver where he was still _her_ Oliver and not the most handsome Demon's Head in history.

This was really how she found herself opening the door to Oliver's chambers after her super intense confrontation of Ra's Al Ghul – of which she had no intention of telling Oliver. There he was, sitting there with his fingers pressed to his lips, looking as broody and enigmatic and handsome as she'd recognized him to be. And she just needed him.

So she told him. She poured her heart out to him with three words. Her heart was his for the taking if he understood the gravity of the situation.

When he removed her glasses, and she looked up at him into his clear blue eyes with her green ones, she realized all her past kisses felt wrong despite how much they mattered. And this one, she was sure it would be right.

So she bent her head and she pressed her lips to his like never before. Like she was never scared of doing it wrong.

Her heart didn't splinter. Her brain didn't blank. There were no fireworks. Her limbs didn't go numb. It was a gradual, poignant, ardent spread of embers through her veins, coursing past her nerves, breaking her apart but putting her back together.

It was _him_ and _her_ being _him_ and _her_. It was clarity.

* * *

**olicity sex next week. hold me.**


End file.
